Today is the second anniversary of the Gifted interview, which I created in February 2020: two years of men and women sharing their vision of Giftedness and their life experiences!
I invite you to (re)discover them all in this retrospective interview. Thanks to Licka, Vincent, Bénédicte, Anthony, Emilie, Fusée, Nathalie, Stephan, Caroline, Didier, Gwendoline, Quentin, Elodie, Eric, Anne-Claire, Nicolas Martin Saint-Léon, Jeanne, Barry, Florine, Nicolas Gauvrit, Priscile, who have made this richness of information and experience possible!
PS: if you’re new to the Gifted interview, you can also take a look at the retrospective of the first year HERE and choose the interviews that interest you!
.IF I COULD CHOOSE, WOULD I STILL BE GIFTED?
Without a moment’s hesitation, yes! – CAROLINE DESQUEST
.WHAT (MY OWN) GIFTEDNESS MEANS TO ME
It’s being normal. For me, it’s the world that’s weird. When I was younger, I used to wonder why people didn’t understand things right away or how they could accept arbitrary truths without questioning them.
There are 2 aspects: Being gifted is already being in the minority. In addition to this, the more differences one accumulates from the norm, the more one feels out of step, especially in systems created to favor the majority.
The second aspect is the ability to see things differently naturally. I don’t have to make any effort. When you are different, you develop the ability to put yourself in the shoes of people you don’t understand. In the end, combining several visions allows you to see in perspective. – FUSEE NAI
.IF I HAD TO CHOOSE AN IMAGE OR A KEYWORD THAT SUMS UP WHAT GIFTEDNESS MEANS
Giftedness is the size of the mental ‘engine’ and its performance. It doesn’t presume, however, whether you know how to drive the car, whether you are a nice ‘driver’, whether you have a good GPS, or even whether you have any idea where you are going. And because we have a more powerful engine, we also have potentially more serious accidents, and we sometimes leave others in the dust of our wheels… – NICOLAS MARTIN SAINT-LEON
.HOW LONG HAVE I KNOWN ABOUT IT?
October 2021. It’s a question I had been asking myself for a few years but without allowing myself to believe it before taking the test. For me, having the confirmation of this identification was above all an access to a rereading and a better understanding of my life, of my choices, of some of my experiences. – PRISCILLE MAHE
.WHAT PHASES HAVE I GONE THROUGH SINCE MY DISCOVERY?
- Understanding: I now know why I am different, there is an objective and recognised reason.
- Enthusiasm to develop my “new superpowers”, to make giftedness a real strength.
- Doubt my ability to do something good with this new awareness of my functioning and not to let myself be overwhelmed by the overflow of everything (especially my emotions).
- The real awareness. I am the only one who can live my life. I decide everything, even (especially?) unconsciously. So I juggle with my brain to confront it with fulfillment. And to do this, I try to live in the present moment because it is the only thing that belongs to me! – JEANNE LINGUINOU
.HOW DO I EXPLAIN IT TO SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER HEARD OF IT?
That giftedness has nothing to do with clichés, that you don’t have to be Einstein or solve quadratic equations at the age of 7 to have an IQ that is outside the average. That IQ is one thing, but that it is only the expression of potential. And therefore some people will go much further with a less advantageous starting capital, and others, despite a high IQ, will struggle. And that I was lucky enough that this high IQ was expressed in a way that was compatible with the school system/school success. – GWENDOLINE VESSOT
.THE REMARK WHICH BLEW ME AWAY MOST WHEN I TALKED ABOUT IT
“It takes you a while to figure out sometimes, are you really sure you’re gifted ?” – EMILIE VION
.HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE (TO KNOW IT)
I understood what my own frame of reference was. So I stopped struggling to adapt to the imposed frame of reference and continued to create my own – STEPHAN BOSCHAT
.WHAT I HAVE ALLOWED MYSELF TO DO EVER SINCE
I allow myself to create, to “butterfly”. I allow myself to trust the fact that it is by scattering myself that I build precisely.
I allow myself to distance myself from certain people because I am comforted by my possible incompatibility and my inability to maintain superficial relationships. – LICKA SARR
.WHAT IT CREATES TO OTHERS WHEN I TALK ABOUT IT
Sometimes an interest, sometimes a total lack of understanding but unfortunately often a judgment. – EMILIE VION
.WHAT IRRITATES ME WITH GIFTEDNESS
The myths without hesitation.
NO, we are not all little Einsteins. NO, we don’t have rocket science. NO, we don’t do everything right all the time. NO, we are not from another planet. NO, we don’t consider others as stupid because they are not Gifted. NO, we are not all full of ourselves.
On the other hand: YES, we can be friends, with pleasure, we have so much to offer each other. YES, we struggle like everyone else in our daily lives, we have much the same problems. YES, there are also idiots among gifted people. YES, we sometimes fail, make mistakes, don’t know, fail, doubt. YES, we live and feel things more intensely. YES, our brain goes faster. YES, we are “too much”, all the time. YES, we are also human. – ELODIE BOSSOUTROT
.WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO EMPHASIZE ABOUT GIFTEDNESS
Contrary to what we see in the media (over-representation of the “not feeling good”), I find giftedness super cool… it is correlated with a whole lot of positive outcomes in life… (education, life expectancy, etc… see Frank Ramus’ conference). I’m well aware that some people have problems (heterogeneous IQ, etc.) or other disorders… but I have the impression that sometimes we blame disorders that are independent, or simply “amplified” by the giftedness, but for which giftedness is not the cause. – NICOLAS MARTIN SAINT-LEON
.WHAT I PERSONALLY FIND TO BE THE MOST DIFFICULT
For me, I would say it is procrastination, which can take up a lot of your time at once and make your day completely unproductive simply because it is not a good day and you feel that you do not have all your capacities at their full efficiency. Whereas on another day it’s the feeling of having an overflow of feelings where the slightest hitch in your process will ruin your productivity. There are also times when simple words that you are trying to say, which are very much in your head and perfectly clear, fade away, disappear to leave a void where you don’t know what you wanted to say or how you were going to communicate. – ANTHONY GONNET VANDEPOORTE
.WHAT I PERSONALLY LOVE
The ease of learning and understanding a complex subject quickly. The more complex the problem, the more I dwell on it. – ERIC LABRIE
.MY WELLBEING TOOL OR PRACTICE THAT HELPS ME MOST
Sitting in bed at night, putting headphones on, listening to the sounds of nature (especially storms and thunderstorms….I love storms and thunder), and letting my imagination run wild. It’s like sitting in a cinema without knowing the film, but knowing in advance that whatever we see there we will enjoy. – QUENTIN
.A MISREPRESENTATION THAT I WANT TO CALL INTO QUESTION
Giftedness is not a disease, does not mean that we are top of the class, that intelligence of the heart is not always intelligence of the brain! – VINCENT LAHOUZE
.WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO GIFTED PEOPLE
The feeling of being happy or unhappy rarely depends on our state in the absolute, but on our perception of the situation, on our capacity to be satisfied with what we have.
-Dalai Lama – ANNE-CLAIRE PLISKA
.WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT CONCERNED
The same thing in reverse. Don’t be intransigent, listen to the difference. Don’t say to yourself “he’s stupid, not logical, talks too fast, incomprehensible, has a too complex background, has too many crazy ideas, sees too far ahead…”. Know how to identify these types of individuals who are different from you and do not reject them. They can be a great asset for joint projects. They can be great adventurers. You just don’t want to restrict them or impose too much of a framework on them. They will try to break them, run away or otherwise wither away. – STEPHAN BOSCHAT
.WHAT I WOULD RECOMMEND TO SOMEONE WHO IS WONDERING
Wondering is tiring. If you notice that you spend energy going nowhere, then you might as well use it to go to a precious place: the place of better self-knowledge. – GWENDOLINE VESSOT
.THE MISTAKE NOT TO MAKE FOR A GIFTED PERSON
To think that he/she will have to continuously over-adapt in order to be appreciated and to fit in. – NATHALIE ALSTEEN
.MY PROFESSIONAL ADVICE FOR GIFTED
Know that you have a strong sensitivity to boredom and therefore find what corresponds to you, even if it means changing if you are done with it because it is part of your functioning and it is ok. If we want to grow professionally, it seems important to me to find what makes us vibrate, even if it means changing as soon as it is no longer the case. This can be seen as “professional instability”, it is really about being aligned with who you are: Intense people, who are able to succeed in complex situations when the brain is really stimulated. – PRISCILLE MAHE
.MY PERSONAL ADVICE FOR GIFTED
Do not look for everything that is important to you (we can be very idealistic) in the same person. Personally, I have learned to appreciate each person around me for the aspects I share with them and if I am “missing” something, it is an opportunity to meet new friends. – NATHALIE ALSTEEN
.MY OPINION ABOUT THE IQ WAIS TEST
Made for gifted people who still accept frames – DIDIER POLI
.IS IT A WASTE NOT TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE GIFTED?
I don’t know. I think that it depends if you are already actualizing your life. – BARRY GELSTON
.WHEN I MEET ANOTHER GIFTED PERSON, DO I RECOGNIZE HIM.HER? BY WHAT?
It’s hard to explain. A certain “too much”, but too much what? That’s another question… – EMILIE VION
.WHAT DO GIFTED PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON?
Mensa ? – ANNE-CLAIRE PLISKA
.THE CRUCIAL STEPS NOT TO BE MISSED IN THE JOURNEY OF A GIFTED PERSON?
I would rather talk about time. Don’t forget to leave room for it, to give yourself time to realise, live and integrate. – FLORINE ROGE
.THE LAST THING I LEARNED ON THE SUBJECT (THAT I’D LIKE TO SHARE)
We happen to be analyzing monumental data (250,000 people), a large British database, and we looked at what was special. In the surprising things, we realized that there were more homosexual behaviors in Gifted people. This is in line with older studies that suggested this, but this time, given the size of the sample, it’s pretty clear. – NICOLAS GAUVRIT
.A GIFTED INSPIRATION FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY
I think it’s interesting what’s been going on for a long time in Israel.
In Germany, there are several large study programs on gifted people – adults and children – including enrichment programs. They consist of nourishing Gifted children outside of school while leaving them in the school system. This gives them the opportunity to have favorable social contacts or simply to be better nourished intellectually. – NICOLAS GAUVRIT
.A WISH FOR THE FUTURE
That it becomes better known and above all that we stop making a big deal of it as if it was national pride. OH MY GOD, WE HAVE A GIFTED PERSON IN THE FAMILY. Thank you, Karen, that doesn’t stop him·her from becoming a big jerk.
It doesn’t put anyone above anyone else at all. – BENEDICTE BRAUD
.A HUNCH ON THE SUBJECT
Cognitive diversity is the next wave of HR policy for inclusiveness in companies. – ANNE-CLAIRE PLISKA
.WHO WOULD I LIKE TO HAND OVER THE QUESTIONNAIRE?
To my friends the wasps. One of them, in the summer of last year, used to come up to my face to ask for food. It was both touching and rather intelligent for a being that is not especially supposed to be able to develop such inter-species interaction. Wasp: around a million neurons and yet capable of analysis via logical reasoning, synthesis and communication strategy development. I am convinced that she was more ‘intelligent’ than I was in certain relational aspects. – DIDIER POLI
.THE QUESTION THAT I WAS MISSING BUT THAT I WOULD LIKE TO ANSWER?
I would like to discuss what it means to teach young gifted homeschoolers:
The biggest challenge that I find working with gifted children is that many don’t give themselves room to make a mistake. It seems to me that so much of the feedback from their world is that they are wonderful because they have immediate information. In everyone’s life, there comes a time where learning a topic does not come easily. It is at this point where many gifted children find themselves in conflict with their gifted identity of being the really smart kids who can figure things out immediately. Being in the position of not having the information immediately creates some type of cognitive dissonance and avoidance behaviors.
The important work is in sharing what it is like to work through a struggle and create a new gifted identity as someone who can patiently work through developing a new skill. I find that it takes a relaxed environment where I model making actual mistakes where I have my whoops moment, smile, maybe make a joke about it, back track and follow my process, and then try something new. If the teacher makes mistakes, then they can too. The cool thing is that as the learners develop these skills, then they can go from unrealized potential to building quality problem solving skills that will be lifelong friends. – BARRY GELSTON
